Court filing: University investigation shows that SJU fired professor with no evidence of wrongdoing

A new court filing in a lawsuit by a former St. Joseph’s University professor against his old employer sheds new light on the investigation the university conducted into claims against the professor’s character — and a number of quotes from that investigation’s final report suggest the university had little, if anything, to hold against him.

In 2021, the university investigated visiting mathematics professor Greg Manco after multiple allegations — mostly on social media at the time — that Manco had acted with racial bias in his classroom. But the new court filing quotes the university’s investigation as saying “there is no evidence that Manco treated students unfairly based on race or any other protected characteristic while they were a student in his class.”

After the investigation had concluded, Manco’s status as visiting professor was revoked when the university decided to rescind his contract and make him an adjunct professor instead — a move that resulted in lower pay and far fewer benefits. The university said the action was needed because of budget constraints, but Manco, who had worked at St. Joe’s for seventeen years, said it was retaliation.

The controversy erupted in early 2021, when former students worked up a social media campaign against Manco after they became upset over a post Manco made on X about racial reparations.

“Suppose your great-great-grandfather murdered someone,” he tweeted on Feb. 17. “The victim’s great-great-grandson knocks on your door, shows you the newspaper clipping from 1905, and demands compensation from you. Your response?”

“Now get this racist reparation bulls*** out of your head for good,” he concluded. His post linked to an Associated Press story reporting that the Biden administration was “giving its support to studying reparations for black Americans for slavery and discrimination.”

Manco’s post was made from an account in which he was largely but not completely anonymous. The account’s “biography” did not say the posts belonged to Greg Manco, but at other times, various posts to the social media platform indicated that the author was a math professor, or that the author was employed at SJU.

Soon after Manco’s post, various persons formed an online petition asking St. Joe’s to take action against Manco for being “racist” in the classroom, and others were making posts to X and Instagram — posts which tagged SJU accounts — and demanded that the university punish Manco.

Two days after the original post, the university placed him on temporary leave. It later suspended him for the remainder of the spring semester, saying that the investigation into Manco’s conduct in the classroom would likely take that long to be conducted.

“Dr. Greg Manco of Saint Joseph’s University is currently on PAID LEAVE during an investigation regarding his racist tweets on his account,” the Change.org petition said in 2021. “This man should not be given an investigation, he should be fired for his remarks and actions.”

Manco sued St. Joes in January, 2022, alleging defamation, civil conspiracy, and other charges.

In the court document filed Thursday, Manco’s attorneys gave the most insight yet provided into SJU’s investigation. The new filing quotes the investigation ten different times, and all of the quotes appear to completely support him.

One of the primary drivers of the online complaints as well as making more formal complaints to the university was a former student, Hadassah Colbert, who is black.

According to the court filing, the SJU investigation into Manco’s conduct found “Colbert did not provide any direct evidence of discrimination or harassment while she was a student in Manco’s class, and there is no evidence that Manco treated Colbert differently because of her race.”

“These Twitter posts appear to represent Manco’s own personal opinions, and do not suggest in any way that they represent the views of the University,” the investigation also found. 

“I further conclude that the Twitter comments at issue on Manco’s Twitter account do not constitute harassment and did not create an intimidating or hostile learning environment under University policy,” the investigator wrote elsewhere in the report.

Those items stand in sharp contrast to what the university was saying in July of 2021, when SJU did not renew the contract Manco had enjoyed for more than a dozen years.

In an email to Broad + Liberty, a spokesperson for SJU at that time said: “The potential outcomes of an investigation include a finding of more likely than not that a violation of policy occurred, a finding of more likely than not that a violation of policy did not occur, or no determination could be made. In this case, a definitive determination could not be made due to insufficient evidence.”

Manco’s suit is not only against the university, but also against Colbert and others who made statements about Manco in the social media posts that first inflamed the situation in February of 2021.

A spokesperson for the university deferred when asked about the new revelations.

“The matter is before the court and we will respond in that forum,” said Gail Balascak, the university’s associate vice president of marketing and communication.

Requests for comment to two attorneys representing various other defendants in the suit were not immediately returned.

Manco’s attorney, Joe Toddy, said as the discovery phase has progressed, all the evidence he is seeing points just one direction.

“I’ve not seen one document that St. Joe’s or any of the alumni defendants have provided us that does not make me have even more belief in Greg’s case. As we pointed out in our original pleading, Greg was made a scapegoat. It’s very obvious,” Toddy said. 

“I’ve reviewed their investigation documents and they exonerated Greg. Of course, St. Joe’s chose to tell the media something completely else, kept him on administrative leave, cut down his classes, and then when he had the temerity to file this lawsuit, they then tried to hide behind FERPA and fire him. And it’s just not right.”

As for the “why” someone at SJU would need to be scapegoated, Manco and his attorneys argued in this new filing that SJU administration had been under pressure from the student body for other racial issues in the preceding years.

For example, in December 2018, SJU students launched a sit-in protests over complaints about racism, according to the student newspaper, The Hawk. That particular report quotes Colbert expressing her frustration with how a separate racism investigation on campus was handled. Many of those issues spilled over into 2019 as well, a search of stories on The Hawk shows.

Toddy, who works with the law firm Zarwin Baum, said discovery runs through the end of the year, and depositions begin in October.

The allegations against Manco happened when the nation was still soul searching in the wake of the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. For example, in the wake of Floyd’s death, jobs in DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — rose “by 55 percent since [Floyd’s death], after falling by 60 percent at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March, according to data from employment and recruiting site Glassdoor,” a news report from 2020 said.

Todd Shepherd is Broad + Liberty’s chief investigative reporter. Send him tips at tshepherd@broadandliberty.com, or use his encrypted email at shepherdreports@protonmail.com. @shepherdreports

email icon

Subscribe to our mailing list:

9 thoughts on “Court filing: University investigation shows that SJU fired professor with no evidence of wrongdoing”

  1. It’s such a shame that it took this many years for this guy to begin to see justice because young adults are stupid and leadership is lacking.

  2. There is no longer any respectful comment that can be made about St. Joseph’s University.
    (From a graduate who once loved it.)

      1. Saint Joseph’s reaction to these false allegations is disgraceful and makes a mockery of the idea of a university being an institution that values honesty, integrity and academic freedom.
        The university administration has proven themselves to be liars and without honor .

  3. Hmmmm…. If a private institution firing a professor bothers b&l so much, why are they deafeningly silent on the PUBLIC teachers forced out of their jobs in Florida BY THE GOVERNMENT for the crime of having different political opinions than the politicians in charge? Just one of many examples that people will probably dismisses by waving their hands and attacking the source.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2023/03/17/florida-university-fires-professor/11490882002/

    1. Why would a Philadelphia-area publication have a story about a Philly school but not have one about some stuff in other states a thousand miles away? It’s a real head-scratcher!

  4. Oh and here’s another great example – a ut professor fired for exercising first amendment rights outside of class which are supposed to be guaranteed by the constitution. I guess its OK though for the right because they disagree with HIS views, just not the st.joes prof. “Free speech for me but not for thee” seems to be the right’s rallying cry. Except of course its even worse because st.joes is private and UT is a public, government run institution.

Leave a (Respectful) Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *